How long have you been using Xara products?

[Unregistered]

I'd been using CorelDraw commercially for many years when I decided to find out what this odd little program, 'CorelXara 1.0' was... at first I was impressed by the speed. Simply awesome! I couldn't believe vector graphics could be so FAST! But it took some time and a couple of web projects before I realised what an incredible powerhouse was hidden beneath this deceptively simple program.

Xara has since become one of the loves of my life. Thank you and CONGRATULATIONS!!!

David Higgins

http://home.iprimus.com.au/davidhigg.../ART/index.htm

[Unregistered]

When I saw Xara Web Style and started using it, my web pages changed completely... I now own all of Xara's products in the most recent versions, because they are simply the best....
Congratulations Xara for hanging in for 25 years!!!!
Garry Nelson

[pauland]

OK, Here's some anecdotes..

First, our first Xara product - wordwise on the Beeb. I absolutely loved my BBC B (even though it arrived with a damaged keyboard that I had to solder to get it to work properly).

Wordwise was my wifes first introduction to word processing. The BBC showed 40 characters per line and it took a lot of education to stop my wife putting in a linefeed after 40 characters (wordwise wasn't wysiwyg).

The most interesting thing was how she used it. She used to print out her documents (mostly college essays) then get a scissors and literally cust and past the output using tractor roll paper (remember that?) and a stapler. Then, with everything re-arranged, she would use wordwise to change the original to match her creation...

When her final thesis had to be submitted we needed good quality output - our dot matrix was pretty poor (epson RX80F/T)- no match for a real typewriter.

I arranged with a college friend of mine to borrow a high-quality printer (I forget the name for them - they used golfballs with the letters on) over a weekend. The Thesis had to be handed in on Monday Afternoon and the printer had to be returned Monday AM too.

The printer was collected Friday afternoon from the college (about 30 miles away). We were all set, my wife had some editing to do and we needed some diagrams, but it would be no problem (she said).

Friday evening I realised I had the printer but no handbook or instructions. The internet hadn't been invented and there was no chance of getting any help. The big problem I faced was underlining things. Just how would I get this printer to underline?

Saturday morning I was writing assembly code to patch into the print routine for the computer. Wordwise had special characters that said when to start underlining and when to stop. I knew what wordwise was doing, so I alstered the print routine so that once we started underlining I would print the character, backspace the carriage, then print an underscore, for every character until the underlining stopped.

It worked a drem, though it sounded like a mchine gun when underlining. I worked all weekend (well into the night) on the printouts and revisions and printing diagrams. We finished at 11AM on Monday morning - I had a 60 mile drive to return the printer and arrive very late for work..

Thank you Charles and Xara - you saved the day. I often wish for a return to those good old days when computers really were fun..

Paul

[Seagull]

I voted between 5 to 10 years for the following: the first xara is registered 18 May 2001 which is slightly over 5 years but more important, I remember downloading a trial version of Xara 3d about 10 or 11 years ago, maybe even longer. I didn't buy it but I still got my fingers dirty on it so I guess that counts.

Now I have all three version of Xara installed and running, two on one old computer and two on a second even older computer, plus xara 3d6, so I guess I'm helping to support the company in my own little way....frank